The debate over the effectiveness of artificial intelligence (AI) vs. human capabilities is more relevant than ever. While it’s easy to fall into the trap of viewing them as rivals, the real question is how the two can work together to be more effective. A recent conversation inside Monterey Language Service highlighted this future trend, revealing the crucial role that human expertise plays in AI development.

Humans can make AI better

In copy editing, AI can analyze text for grammatical errors, and even adjust tone and style based on the context. However, as Gary pointed out, AI may handle at best 80-90% of the editing process, but the last step often requires a human touch: flexible, context-aware, and capable of grasping nuances that AI might overlook.

Mei-Ling, on the other hand, argued that the focus should be not on the limitations of AI copy editing but on celebrating its rapid development and the role humans can play in enhancing AI capabilities.

The Path Forward: Enhancing AI with Human Expertise

Mei-Ling emphasized the idea that humans can make AI even better by providing it with high-quality training data. This is an important insight: the future of AI doesn’t lie solely in its inherent capabilities but in its integration with humans.

While refining AI’s editing capabilities, we need to provide it with a variety of professional materials to cut its teeth on. There are several ways that humans can do this, and it all begins with giving AI high quality writing to train on.

But what specific steps should be taken to move forward? There are many things we can do including, but not limited to the following:

• Clearly sharing context information with AI concerning the relevant conversation or the audience
• Exposing AI to detailed examples of human conversation, including informal language, idioms, and regional dialects
• Training AI to recognize and respond to emotional cues
• Sharing cultural nuances and social norms
• Guiding AI to better understand references and humor
• To model turn-taking and back-and-forth dialogue to AI
• Helping AI understand the tone, rhythm and flow of human conversation
• Feeding high quality content to AI
• Providing feedback on how the AI’s responses come across

By combining these approaches, professional linguists can play a vital role in shaping AI. More than ever, we as human translators and interpreters have a lot of work to do, particularly in connection with individual creativity and uniqueness.

Our Previous Blogs about AI

Monterey Language Services has constantly kept an eye on AI development. Our blog series since August of 2023 has been aimed at showing how the synergy of human creativity can elevate AI performance.

Check out our previous blogs about AI:

Professional Copyediting after Content Creation: Staying ahead of the AI curve

Blue and White Porcelain: The Joy of Translation from Behind the Scenes

A Love Letter to Chinese Culture — Blue and White Porcelain Lyrics

Advice to Future Interpreters

Interpreters and Music: Translation Accuracy

Interpreters and Voices: On Human Aura

Interpreters and Voices: On Human Recording

AI Performing Music: On Human Individuality

Diversity and Richness: Interpreters and Music

Thoughts about AI: Interpreters and Music

AI and Translation

These blogs discuss AI’s capabilities, how we have worked with it and what our expectations are.

“AI is able to follow patterns to come up with solutions that others may have thought of and implemented before, but without managing to achieve such originality on their own. Is it possible for AI to progress towards greater individuality and uniqueness?” ( AI Performing Music: On Human Individuality)

“AI is capable, but then can AI interpret our tones, our feelings, our energy, our life, our passion, our emotions, and our sense of mission that professional interpreters have shared?” ( Thoughts about AI: Interpreters and Music)

 Conclusion

Rather than debating whether humans or AI did better in copy editing, the blog is intended to celebrate the collaborative efforts that can make AI development and human creativity progress together. Ultimately, it’s essential to value partnership over competition. The future of copy editing will depend on our ability to combine human expertise with artificial intelligence to create something truly remarkable.

As an interpreter, there are many ways you can do community outreach and help more people get vaccinated. There are resources in other languages that speak to different information about the pandemic and vaccines, such as WHOs website, Boston Medical Center, Washington State Health Department, or even Orange County’s NC Health Department. Helping others to understand the vaccine and then help them get it is a very important service to the community and one that you can help with.

For an interpreter, first, the most obvious thing to do is set up an appointment to get your vaccine if you haven’t already. To do so, you will be able to be allowed into more places, and you will overall be more comfortable being outside. Though many businesses and areas are beginning to open up again, some places will only let you be present if you are fully vaccinated. By being fully vaccinated, you will be able to be anywhere you need to be. The other advantage is that you will have the experience of being vaccinated so that you feel more comfortable in conveying messages to the patient you are interpreting for. Your confidence might even be able to ease some of their anxiety.

After, you are vaccinated, you can help interpret at clinics, pharmacies, hospitals, or at vaccination areas that are set up outside of hospitals. The places that most likely will need the majority of help are the areas that are set up outside of hospitals. Depending on the population of the area that you are in, there might be a different concentration of non-native English speakers. For example, in California, there is a significant amount of Hispanic people, so there is a great demand for Spanish interpreters. If you are interested in helping as a volunteer interpreter, you can try looking on the internet for places that need interpreters. You could also join a medical hotline that hospitals use when they need an interpreter.

However, you should be careful of scams that might take advantage of you. You can find out if something is legitimate or not by searching it online or by looking at the various resources on the FCC, FTC, or US National Cyber Awareness System. If you do happen to come across a scam, you can report it to the FTC so that they can investigate it and hopefully shut it down so that no one else is affected by it.